Choctawhatchee Bay
bay in the Florida Panhandle
Choctawhatchee Bay is a bay in the Emerald Coast region of the Florida Panhandle. The bay, located within Okaloosa and Walton counties, is an inlet of the Gulf of Mexico and has a surface area of 334 square kilometres (129 mi2). It connects to Santa Rosa Sound in Fort Walton Beach, Florida to the west and to St. Andrews Bay in Bay County to the east, via the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway. East Pass (also known as Destin Pass) is the only outlet of the bay flowing directly into the Gulf of Mexico, and is crossed by US 98. The Choctawhatchee River flows into the bay, as do several smaller rivers and streams. The tolled Mid-Bay Bridge (SR 293) crosses the bay, connecting the city of Destin to Niceville, Florida. The Judge Clyde B. Wells Bridge (US 331) crosses the eastern part of the bay, connecting Freeport to the coast. The Bay's history dates back to Spanish, French, and English expansion with numerous purposes served throughout, from lumber transportation, military use, to water sports.
History
The bay was charted by Spanish, French, and English expeditions, The bay appears on some charts as "St.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Choctawhatchee Bay” as bay in the Florida Panhandle. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as bay in the Florida Panhandle. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5103736. VIAF identifies the subject as 315528088. The Library of Congress control number is sh96007471. Authority coordinates are 30.439, -86.311. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Choctawhatchee Bay” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.